


love, and be silent (and make these hard hearts)

by Spaghettoi



Series: my varied-canon-compliance dreamsmp works [4]
Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Manberg-Pogtopia War on Dream Team SMP (Video Blogging RPF), but only kinda, literally everyone is there - Freeform, thats right were back to wilbur
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-14 10:54:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28544364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spaghettoi/pseuds/Spaghettoi
Summary: “I’ll be honest, I’m not even sure what a president does,” Tubbo says with a shrill, nervous giggle, and it’sjust not fair.Wilbur stares up at the new podium with a smile like a saint and a holy, handsome glimmer in his eye. His laughter the angel’s chorus, his clapping the beat of wings. There isn’t a shred of madness in his posture; every bit of him is carved with divine intention. Fundy’s dread sinks like a stone in his stomach as he realizes that the choice of Tubbo was as stupid as it was purposed.ORL'manburg is dead. Each and every one of its killers is left to pick up its pieces.
Relationships: Floris | Fundy & Wilbur Soot, TommyInnit & Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), Tommyinnit & Toby Smith | Tubbo, Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit & Phil Watson
Series: my varied-canon-compliance dreamsmp works [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2064765
Comments: 5
Kudos: 43





	love, and be silent (and make these hard hearts)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WreakingHavok](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WreakingHavok/gifts).



> inspired by the most one-off line of all time from the november 16th streams:
> 
> WILBUR: Techno, recite King Lear. Techno, recite King Lear for us.  
> TECHNO: I cannot recite King Lear for you. This is not within my capabilities.
> 
> so that's where all the quotes come from whoo  
> ridiculously inspired by WreakingHavok's Pas De Deux, which is literally a work of art that I think about daily

_“And when children go wrong they can often go wrong with a vengeance. There is such energy in children; they are more powerful than any bomb.”  
_ -William Golding, “Why Boys Become Vicious” 

_1.  
_ **_KING LEAR  
_ ** _Thou hast seen a farmer’s dog bark at a beggar?[…]There thou  
__Mightst behold the great image of authority: a  
_ _Dog’s obeyed in office._

The sad thing about it is that all he can think is _it’s not fair_. And it isn’t; L’manburg was his father’s nation, and if he doesn’t want it anymore, it makes sense it would be slipped into Fundy’s pocket. But his father has always been deceptively soft with him, and with a fresh bout of scathing and raw infantilization, Wilbur puts his trust in the hands of two children before his own adult son.

It takes Tommy exactly half a second to jump into raucous cheering, throwing himself over Tubbo’s seat in front of him and practically tackling the poor kid to the ground. Fundy staggers unnecessarily backward and watches the boys celebrate with a disconnected sense of pride. Not his boys necessarily, but close enough to be brothers or cousins - close enough to be family, and the excitement that radiates off of the heap of sixteen-year-olds is pure and contagious. 

_Tubbo deserves it_ , he rationalizes as the kid steps on the stage. Wilbur claps his shoulder with a triumphant shout. _He’s been around. He’s young, and he’s naive, but he - surely he deserves it. Surely there’s a reason. He’ll be a fair president, and he’ll deserve it, and he’ll make - he’ll bring L’manburg back to its values, and -_

“I’ll be honest, I’m not even sure what a president does,” Tubbo says with a shrill, nervous giggle, and it’s _just not fair._

Wilbur stares up at the new podium with a smile like a saint and a holy, handsome glimmer in his eye. His laughter the angel’s chorus, his clapping the beat of wings. There isn’t a shred of madness in his posture; every bit of him is carved with divine intention. Fundy’s dread sinks like a stone in his stomach as he realizes that the choice of Tubbo was as stupid as it was purposed. 

In truth, Wilbur Soot’s haggard demeanor is a necessary normal. However short his stay in Pogtopia, that’s one thing that Fundy could tell. His father has never been anything more than crucial, pleasantries thrown out the window in exchange for seconds spared and work, work, work. The celebratory whoop for Tubbo’s finest inheritance, the quick and delighted ruffle of Tommy’s hair - these things are not necessary, and yet they happen, and if Fundy knows anything it’s that Wilbur Soot is a stubborn bastard with a sick sense of humor. 

He does not watch his father laugh. He does not catch his gaze when it’s thrown, and he does not see the smile that Wilbur has fade from his face. Instead, he pushes forth with mindless vigor and begins to take down bundle after bundle of rain-soaked, crepe-paper streamers. The clack of telltale work boots against the cobble of the square and the fatal lie of “I’ll be back” fall upon deaf ears. 

Fundy is given nothing, in the end. Tubbo’s fashioned the patriotic glimmer of fireworks in his eyes into a true pride, and, expecting nothing less, the crowd hisses with their own glee when the new vice is sworn in right on the overhandled grounds of L’manburg. Tommy grabs Tubbo’s upper arms and swears something like loyalty under his breath before pulling his brother into a bone-crushing hug. Fundy feels something sick darken his stomach as he realizes the mark of his own father among the subjects he conducted.

He put the work in. He put the work in, damn it all, made the shoddy diary and pulled the pin from the final grenade of Schlatt’s rule - he stuck it out, chewed the administration up from the inside out, which is more than even Quackity can say - and he realizes, in that instant, that he could be forgotten from the whole ordeal if he walked away. 

He tears down another streamer with poignant ferocity. This stupid country - this place, this wretched land and its curses - took his father from him. He burns with the injustice of it all. Wilbur Soot, noble and valiant leader, dedicates his life to a country and can’t even hand the damn place off to his own kin. But that wasn’t enough, was it, because he looks around the square at these people - Tommy, pursuing a lopsided argument with a stalwart Dream and his cronies, Niki, working deftly at the rainbowed canopy, Eret, tossing bouquet after bouquet of withering flowers into a pile at the foot of the podium - and he understands that he’s never been more than a footnote. Stained by his father’s reputation, cast dully in its shadow, _that’s the president’s boy, the president’s son,_ like he’s a fucking object - 

“Fundy,” and it’s Tubbo’s careful hand on his forearm, of course, “are you alright?”

He can’t help the wild cackle that throws his head back. “Oh, never better! Never better,” he says. He throws an arm around Tubbo’s shoulders and tugs them into his chest before the kid can protest. “If anyone deserves this, it’s you,” he says, and he really, really means it. 

Tubbo pats apprehensively at his back. “Thank you, Fundy, that really - that means a lot.” 

“Very welcome, Mr. President.” 

Tubbo looks like he could explode all over again, proper bursting with pride. “And there’ll be a seat for you, of course,” he adds fiercely. Fundy’s gut twists about itself in his middle. “We’ll make - you’re a necessary cog!”

And that tracks, doesn’t it? Yes, necessary, so much so that not a spoonful of responsibility can be put on his necessary, necessary plate. Still he doesn’t stoop, squeezing Tubbo until the tensing slope of his shoulders is released and he’s pulling away. Tubbo pats him one more time, firm on his bicep, before Tommy’s tackling him again and hauling him off across the square. Fundy watches him go, lips stretched wide around a sharp, sharp smile. 

He’s not a cynic. Of course, there will be upsides; Tubbo’s never been a sham or shitshow like Schlatt, never been fiery to the point of stupidity like Wilbur. Blessed be the humble, and blessed be the dignified, of which Tubbo has always been both. Sure, Wilbur had intended to fuck them over, but it’s easy enough to tell that he’s got a good head on his shoulders. Won’t be starting any wars, that one. Strong enough to keep Tommy in check - naive enough for the choice to hit Fundy like a punch to the gut. 

And then a scream is ringing through the square. 

The bundle of streamers in his hands hits the stone in favor of stealing his sword from its sheath, ears pressing flat to the top of his head. That’s Tommy, that is - and when he whirls, the scene is so impossibly dense that he feels he’s just walked into a renaissance painting. 

Tommy is crouched on the ground, Niki gripping tightly at his shoulder, the both of them reaching out across the clearing - Eret, Purpled, Thunder, everyone crowded around the two of them, Dream and his soldiers forming the back wall of the canvas - and on the other end, pillar of strength on the sunlit grass is Technoblade, stood over the crumpled body of the new president-elect.

Huh. So that’s the way this thing dies.

The laugh is back, bubbling and horrible in his throat. He keeps his eyes trained on the form of Technoblade, broad-shouldered and crowned in some hazy sunset, shouting with pointed sword in front of him and Tubbo at his back. Tommy screams again, profanities or something similar, and Techno’s boot comes down dangerously close to Tubbo’s slow-rising chest. 

Something about this is probably ironic. No, not ironic - true. It’s staggering, the way they should have seen this coming. The already-fading memory of Technoblade and his disgruntled monotone in the camarvan comes back, drenched in the smell of alcohol. 

Now, Techno seethes. Pure fury in deadly quiet tones, the reprimand of an older brother to an uncooperative group of children. Tommy unrelentingly shouts himself hoarse, Niki holds tirelessly to his shoulder, and Fundy, from the back, feels the shame and dread of the youngest and oldest alike as the unholy rumble of the very ground below makes a twin of him. 

His father has a favorite child, he realizes, as the illusion of painted purity snaps. Heads raise questioningly as the soil shakes, Technoblade’s monologue cut short by a maniacal, disbelieving laugh. His father has a favorite child, and it has never been Fundy, and it is the only one to which Wilbur will ever grant the mercy of peace. 

The podium goes. Quackity, who Fundy had somehow lost track of, flies into the air with a shrill, short-lived wail. Twins, yes, surely that’s what they are - Fundy and this horrible, horrible nation as it breathes its final breath. The group of them cower as the ground begins to go. Technoblade brings down his shield and forces the trembling body of Tubbo to his side behind it. Twins. Too much in common for anything else.

Because in the end, Fundy was born to the same man L’manburg was, exactly the same way: in the middle of a fucking war. 

_2.  
_ **_KING LEAR  
_ ** _I will do such things—  
_ _What they are yet I know not, but they shall be  
_ _The terrors of the earth!_

There’s only so much left that Wilbur can’t do. 

Phil had always been good with his caution. Their homeworld had infinite respawns - it would be stupid not to take the precaution, with three rowdy boys and one yet rowdier tagalong - but he’d taught them to live on one life. They’d done pretty good overall, Wilbur would say. The first of them to kick it had been Techno, and even that had taken fourteen years; but watching his otherwise stoic brother sob in the arms of his father had given Wilbur the nauseous and horrific understanding that a respawn was unpleasant. He’s been through enough now to know that “unpleasant” was truly an understatement. 

Eret takes his first with a blade to the back. Good on him, Wilbur thinks now - he can keep it. As far as the second goes, it’s not so much a “who” as it is a “what” - and he staggers back from the Manberg festival with the ever-ticking clock of his mortality sounding more and more like the loading of a gun. 

Well. Now he’s something in common with his father, he supposes. 

Phil is careful. Phil is a man of few words and fewer actions, choosing instead to stew in his thoughts until they boil into one, final decision. Phil has no regrets; he has to, to live for so long on his own, only one life staining the crux of his wrist. Wilbur knows this in the same intrinsic way that he knows the erratic pulse of his own heartbeat.

He also knows that they will never be anything alike. Spent too long in the shadow of Phil’s wings, trying desperately to forge his own. There is no opportunity he does not jump on, and no decision that he weighs the consequences for - stubbornness in the opposite direction, with sticking-to being the only trait that familiarizes them. He’s reckless and boundless in potential, something that Phil had drilled into his head from a young age. Do anything you set your mind to. 

Anything he sets his mind to. To be fair, he probably hadn’t meant complete and total destruction; but this is what he wants, and he’s read the character analysis, and he’s going to do it, just you wait.

So he presses the button. “You didn't,” Phil says, ridiculously short in the ample time for monologue, and then it's over.

The narrative wraps. Dozens of truths simmer at the front of his mind, lapping waves - the wall implodes. The wall becomes the sunlight, becomes the wind. The wind hits his back and holds him tight like a pair of fatherly arms. The light comes first, and the wall second, and the thick smog last. He watches his own euphoria bloom across his face in the reflection of his father’s eyes. Phil jumps forward just a hair too late. Phil does not move at all, and Wilbur does, and that will always, _always_ be the difference between them.

Phil wraps his wings around himself like a shield. Wilbur knows that the feathers are far more delicate than his skin and bones, and he’s sure that Phil knows it, too, but it happens nonetheless. By the time he's peeking out from behind his glass shield, Wilbur's thrown himself at the edge, still smoldering beneath his fingers, zinging up into his arms as he stares desperately into the smog to finally reap his rewards.

What's that thing that parents say? I brought you into this world, I can take you out of it?

“Oh my God,” Phil says, horrified and awestruck as he pulls his wings flush to his back. Wilbur lets out a sick bark of laughter - that’s not a name he’s heard in a while - and cowers further to the ground, knees to chest and parallel to the curdled horizon. “ _Wil!_ ”

Phil doesn’t say anything else. He leaves that empty time to Wilbur, allows him to fill the space in whatever grand nature he feels. “My L’manburg!” he wails, and it echoes out into the cavern even amidst the fighting and distant boom of fireworks. Another round of TNT rumbles somewhere in the distance. “My unfinished symphony, _forever unfinished!_ ” 

His thankful illusion of audience has yet to crumble down around him. The curtains do not draw on this Prime-forsaken show, not even as the stage covers in dust, not even as the spotlights flicker out into abandoned and empty agony, not even as the theatre tears itself apart. Just Phil and Wilbur and L’manburg, just two failed fathers and their two destroyed, destructive sons, playing the parts until they become the characters.

The seats aren’t empty, something says in his head. He finds the sword at his waist - no fucking idea where it’s come from, recognizable only by the sigil carved into the hilt - and realizes that, no matter what tragedy befalleth the hero, the show must go on. 

“Kill me,” he says. “Kill me - Phil, kill me.” 

Phil looks at him as though he’s trying to keep from throwing up everything that makes up his insides. Looks at him like he’s crazy (he probably is). Looks at him like a parent would, like a father would, when completely out of depth. 

He’ll do it. Wilbur knows he will. He gets his drama from somewhere, and they both know in that moment that this is the perfect conclusion. He’s said the lines, he’ll say them again - and Phil will make sure that they are his dying breath. 

“Kill me,” he says, more forceful this time, fingers slipping against the blade of the sword as he thrusts the hilt into his father’s stomach. “Phil, _Phil -_ ”

“You’re my son!” Phil all but wails, and Wilbur could almost cry at the perfect delivery. He shakes with the drama of it all, jams the diamond-studded hilt into Phil’s gut again, and screams like mad something about deserving.

Like his country, Wilbur must die. There is only so much that he can’t do, in the end - this last thing is one of them. 

He’s a coward. The thought is a far more euphoric recognition than he would vouch for publicly. Never again will Wilbur Soot be hailed as a hero, never again will he be known as a freedom fighter - no, he’s always been the one who would rather send children to war than put on a chestplate and throw a sword himself. Maybe the rest of them will finally see. 

Phil looks a lot less stricken, in that moment. It’s almost funny. As he forces the blade through Wilbur once, twice, they both know that this is how it was always meant to end. He takes damage, hits the floor, feels something drain out of him - hope, maybe, any grandiose delusions of his beautiful country that he may have still stowed - and then like a cleanly broken bone, he’s out and over. 

_3.  
_ **_GLOUCESTER  
_ ** _O ruin’d piece of nature! This great world  
_ _Shall so wear out to naught._

Of all things, Mellohi is a shitty fucking waltz. Wilbur's always been the music kid, Tommy his helpless and enraptured audience, counting out each beat. He likes numbers. He likes listening. He certainly fucking likes Mellohi, for all of it's musicality or lack thereof. An integral part of him, that damned thing, locked up safe in some pocket dimension he wishes he could accompany it to - but he can't, so he's stuck here, counting out each third as if trying to figure which way to shuffle his feet this measure. Whether he likes it or not - and he likes Mellohi, but he doesn't like waltzes - he's begun to see the world in threes. And he’s so incredibly aware of the positions of each single person whom he considers of family.

First is Techno. Breathing hard, bathed in sunlight like some kind of shoddy Messiah, like he's trying to make himself matter. He's succeeded. The ground tremors with another round of explosions and he wrenches closer the limp body of Tu - the president elect, shoving out his shield again with a snarl. Tommy's already in the dirt; nowhere to go but into the earth itself as it crumbles.

Second, then - Wilbur. The front of his so-called “button room” has been stripped back like the room of a dollhouse; through the haze and the distance, Tommy could almost swear he was just another toy soldier stuck somewhere it shouldn't have been, a bit out of proportion with the rest of the room. But he's curled up like a baby, shaking like a leaf, and shouting louder than Tommy's ever heard him. Still yet indistinguishable from the wailing of the TNT. But he's on the ground, black bruises and brown coat and breathing hard, and Phil's - Phil -

Phil is third. And Phil is standing in the place where Wilbur’s ashen particles now float.

It’s too much. He counts them out again, one _(Techno scooping piles of gravity-defying soul-sand out of his enderchest, screaming so loud that he’s spitting, Tubbo leaned into his shield)_ two _(particles - only dust now, pillowing up into the air with the same heaving breaths of broken stone)_ three _(Phil; stoic, solid, straight-backed, looking out at the rest of them with an unreadable face.)_ And it’s not enough. 

One-two-three. He counts each of them as they matter, as they happen, with his pulse. The aftershock of explosions finally settles, more of the limestone crumbling to the bottom of the crater as the lake finally swells enough to overtake it. He watches the water gush between the rock, taking piece after piece with it with milk-white foam. He watches Phil step forward and drop like a stone towards the bottom of the cavern, swooping up at the last second and taking a spot towards the back of Tommy’s crowd. He watches Techno’s face crack into a horrific grin as he steps forward, tusks digging into the ragged flesh of his cheeks. 

He stares straight at Tommy, beckoning him forward with a tick of his sword. There’s something in his expression, something unreadably mad, something furious and burning and absolutely unknowable, and Tommy watches Tubbo peek once up over the shield before he’s sliding down behind it again, a tremor wracking through the ground. One-two-three, and Tommy stands forward as Techno starts talking. 

It’s almost mindless. It would be mindless. Tommy can hardly think, the pounding of blood in his ears meddling with the gushing of water down the cavern, and when Techno asks him if he wants to be a hero, it takes everything in him not to fall and cry and beg some horrific mercy. 

He does, is the thing. He wants to be a hero more than he wants anything else. If that’s all he takes from the conversation, it’s that Techno (his brother, but not anymore, and he’s ducking out of a waltz and into a terrible, stumbling march) wants, more than anything, to punish him for doing his damned best. 

_Fuck this._ “No,” he says, “no, I don’t -” 

“You want power,” Techno snarls, and Tommy whines hasty and impossibly false _no’s._

He wants them safe. He wants to keep everything safe, and he wants to play Mellohi and he wants - where is _Wilbur_ \- and Techno starts spouting something about ancient Greece and Tommy thinks he’s going to vomit. 

He doesn’t, of course. He goes on counting, trying to get his breath back. And nobody moves when Techno finishes his speech, and nobody moves when the withers begin to form, and nobody moves as the first one breathes magic through a dirtied, disgusting black skull. 

Nobody but Tubbo, that is. Tommy watches as he pushes himself up with Techno’s splintering shield and ducks under the man’s arm, barreling across the thin bridge of stone between the two remaining platforms and ramming straight into Tommy. 

“Don’t die,” he says, shoving Tommy back with one hand, fist balled into Tommy’s ragged shirt. Tommy just clutches at his shoulders, mouth dry as he takes in the irony. He feels every dent in his armor as one of the withers rises over Tubbo’s shoulders and begins to charge with a sick, blue glow. 

“Stay behind me, stay close.” Tubbo nods, short and shaking, and takes one stumbling step to Tommy’s left side. The shield goes up instantly, covering the both of them as the other wither rises in the air. Tommy can just make out Techno’s crazed cackle over the fervent talking of the others and the incessant rush of water. What happens next is mostly a blur. Techno shoots, Dream shoots with him, and Tommy helps people out of the water as he fires arrows and shoves his sword into anything black or pink or nauseously green. The world is ending, right here, right now, and there’s no amount of music that can fix it, and Techno drives fireworks into the ground and into the faces of Tommy’s few remaining friends. His fault. All of this is his fault, and if Tommy could ever get close enough to him, he swears on the rhythmic pounding of his pulse that he’ll put his own axe straight between his teeth. The whirlwind of fighting continues, just like it always has, and yet he still insists to Niki that not all is lost as he hauls her up from the lake. 

Because just like that, it’s over. The second wither crashes into a cloud of silver shrapnel in some mass of them, and the circle widens as far as it can, heels along the bank of the cliffs. Techno, breathing hard, shoots one more firework into the center of them and laughs as he walks away. 

With no certain warning, Tubbo collapses face first into the smoldering, ashen soil. Tommy can’t even help him, crumbling into a heap at his side and throwing as much of a protective arm as he has over his back. Niki falls next to them, and Phil, and Eret and Jack and Fundy, and Quackity shows up what must be three minutes later and hands out golden apples he got Prime knows where. 

Tommy can’t take one. Doesn’t need it, he insists, but grabs it and shoves it into the space between Tubbo’s chest and the dirt. What he wouldn’t give for some health back right now, but Tubbo’s nearly died four times tonight and he’s not about to let it happen when they’ve just won. 

That thought makes him stop. They won - they won, didn’t they, crowed it back in the now-missing camaravan - and yet everyone might as well be dead, what with all that they’ve lost. 

“We won,” he says quietly, and beside him Jack groans.

“We didn’t win shit,” he says. “I don’t even know why I’m here.”

“We won,” Tommy insists. “We won.” 

Jack snorts and pushes himself up from the ground, but ultimately says nothing as he stumbles away. 

Tommy duly counts his blessings. Tubbo, crying silently as he nibbles on a golden apple, face pressed in the dirt. Phil, stretched somewhere at his side, wings tight against his shoulders. And - 

And, nothing. Phil and Tubbo are all that remains of his horrifically aged nest, each and every one else hatched into some despicable thing or another. Wilbur, dead, probably for real this time. Techno, who just tried to murder them all. L’manburg, properly eaten away. The discs, shoved in Tubbo’s enderchest and who knows where else. 

Gone. All of it’s gone. Mellohi and it’s shitty waltz leaves him stumbling without a partner on a beaten and dead dance floor. Some dull echo of a count rolls off in his mind, and he taps it dutifully against the small of Tubbo’s back. 

No Wilbur, no Techno. No L’manburg, no discs. Just Tommy. 

Three, he thinks, might just be the dirtiest trick the universe has ever played on him.

_4.  
_ **_GLOUCESTER  
_ ** _As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods  
_ _They kill us for their sport._

There is no funeral for Wilbur Soot.

There is, however, a procession for Jschlatt. Phil assumes it's meant to be a sad spirited event - not that its guests will allow that. The roiling handful of people are loud and raucous with an aggressive, biting edge. Phil figures he shouldn’t try to include himself lest he be caught up and chewed apart. It’s surprisingly celebratory for a man that each of them loathed with every bone in their bodies; Quackity hoots and hollers his way through the thing, almost boasting his disrespect, lauding the others to do the same. It culminates inevitably with the bag of placeholder organs torn apart with vigor by the crowd and Quackity sinking his teeth into a beet until the juice runs like blood down his hands. 

It quiets down after that. Phil watches, half amused, as Tommy stuffs bones into his inventory. Quackity refuses to leave the podium for another four minutes. Tubbo rubs the scarring on his face and proclaims only that Schlatt was a strange, strange man who had gone so misunderstood that it left him for dead.

Always one for sympathy, little Tubbo. Always been a bit of an oddball in that way, and it’s with a sinking feeling in his stomach that Phil watches the president-elect mourn when no-one else does. 

He doesn’t mean to attend the funeral, to be clear. Jschlatt frankly had never had anything to do with him, despite a few one-off run-ins that neither of them learned much from. Yet here he stands, looking up at the shiny little sun that sits like a dime in the gut of the sky and feeling for all the world like he is out of place. 

He marks this week’s group of strange new arrivals on the DreamSMP with a permadeath notice and a stolen diamond sword. Who knows who it belonged to beforehand; it sure as hell wasn’t Wilbur’s, and yet it’s the blade that killed him, and as such has become as much a part of him as something like his face or his voice. 

Phil doesn’t think he’s let go of it in two days. 

He’s stood at the sorry procession with it clutched tight in his hand. Nobody stands beside him, but the man with the creeper’s face (“Sam,” he’d introduced after Phil’d nearly stabbed him, “just call me Sam”) comes close. A few of the others speak; most of them don't; it ends rather unceremoniously with Tubbo, Bad, and surprisingly, Quackity, shoveling the dirt back over the empty coffin.

It’s a waste. A waste of wood, a waste of time. There's no body to bury in the first place, not even the makeshift, and the dust doesn't stick around long enough to get hold of. Entirely unnecessary, and yet they're dutiful in leaving it six feet under. 

No such thing for his middle child. No such pity, or mercy - no, Wilbur Soot is honored only by the withholding of his name from pleasant conversation. In Phil's own righteous head, there is a eulogy, and it goes like this:

Wilbur Soot was a man of action. Hesitance was his first name, but he was true to his word, down to his dying breath. Out of anyone, Phil could account for that. 

Wilbur Soot was a man of intensity. Aggressive, almost; assertive, definitely; intent on keeping to himself except for when necessary. Out of anyone, Tommy could account for that. 

Wilbur Soot was a man of mercy. Accountability wasn’t something he took lightly, if at all, but it was something that mattered, and something that wound up cleaving his family from his side. Out of anyone, Techno could account for that. 

Wilbur Soot was a lot of things. A son, then a brother, and a father, at the end of it. A kid when it mattered, an adult when it didn’t. A president. A tyrant. A leader, carved into his bones, even when he went fucking insane. 

Any title was probably one Wilbur had claimed. Good or bad, good or evil, good or better, he pinned names to the lapel of his coat and insisted on calling himself every single one of them.

That’s where it ends. Each word is thick and ashy, catches beneath his fingernails like grout or concrete, perfectly fitting for a dramatic man and his grey-area politics and his less than climactic end. Phil clutches a piece of paper in his hands - _In honor of J. Schlatt_ , no loving memory - and scans dully over the unending list of aliases tacked beneath his title. 

With a twisted gut, Phil understands that the only insult they cannot throw at the faithfully dead soul of J. Schlatt is _traitor._

“Thank you for coming,” Bad says, grin blacked but cheerful enough beneath the drop-shadow of his hood. The horns that curl over his head are familiar enough to send tremors through the new president’s raw, pink hands.

“Of course,” Tubbo answers. “I mean - what kinda president would I be if I didn’t honor the old guy?”

“Probably a pretty shit one,” Tommy says, elbowing him in the ribs. He eyes the ruined portrait on the wall and wrinkles his nose. “Come on, this place is giving me the creeps.”

So they leave, too. Phil’s not sure why he stays - some paternal obligation, probably - but he does, and when Bad and Sam finally truck away with shovels slung over their shoulders, Quackity stays behind and runs his hands over the piece of old blackstone podium erected as a headstone. 

And with one motion, Phil is intruding.

There's a shake in the vice’s shoulders. He doesn't say anything, but stands with his head bowed before the headstone for a long, long time, hands clasped beneath his chin. Phil watches his own car accident as Quackity turns around, far too slow and far too careful and far too sad.

“Oh,” he says, hands pressed to the underside of his chin, arms stiff. His eye contact is invasive and unwavering and deserved. 

“Hey, mate,” Phil says. It's about as helpful as a “sorry” would be. At least it isn't as insincere.

“You, uh -” he swallows, “- I didn't know you were invited.”

“Was it invite only?” he asks, some sad crack between genuine and joking, and Phil realizes that he has nothing to do with this and nothing to do with Quackity in the same beat that the kid himself does.

“No. It wasn't.” 

The meaning is perfectly clear: Phil is absolutely unwanted. Ender, he wasn't even moral support this time. Every kid he's ever had an impression with carried themselves through the funeral with surprising grace and tact.

Neither of them says anything. The trees don’t dare to move. Phil feels the prickle of a dead man’s painted eyes on the back of his neck and hears someone tell him _run_. 

“Why did you come?” Quackity asks. “Why - why the fuck did you show up, man?”

“I don’t know,” Phil answers honestly. “Just sorta got swept up in it.”

It’s belatedly that Phil realizes Quackity’s crying. It’s belatedly that Phil remembers the man in front of him is still just a kid, only 19 and barely scraping it - Phil looks him up and down and realizes that the suit he’s donned has to be the same one he’s been wearing since Schlatt and his administration.

“You’re an asshole,” Quackity chokes. “Waltz in here like you fuckin’ own the place.”

Phil doesn’t know what to say to that; he opens and shuts his mouth, grinds his teeth together, before looking down at the stupid sword he’s still holding. 

“Do you need a change of clothes?”

Quackity is startled enough that he stops crying. “Uh - yeah,” he says after a second, real soft into the silence. The sun casts the world in a silvery glow, coating the edges of everything in spiderweb; late Autumn has officially run its course. “Yeah, I do.”

Phil nods. Something takes root in his chest, then, something that softens the scar tissue of his heart - and then Quackity is crashing into his arms.

“Prime damn us all,” he says into Phil's shoulder, twisting his hands into the back of his coat. Phil brings his arms up around him almost involuntarily. “Why does everybody on this fuckin’ server hafta have daddy issues?” 

“It’s okay,” Phil says.

“I thought I was alright,” Quackity says. He gives a watery, sad laugh. “Y’know, I looked at Fundy the fuckin’ Fox and thought, ‘yeah, I'm doing pretty good for myself’. But I really fuckin miss him.”

“It’s okay,” Phil says again, contenting himself to holding him right until Quackity pulls away. “You're okay.”

“Prime,” Quackity says after a beat. “Tell anybody about this and I'll fuckin’ - it won't be good, old man, it won't be good.”

“Mm-hmm.” He gives the kid a gentle pat on the back. “We should get you outta this suit.”

“Yeah,” he says, wiping at his face with his sleeve. “Yeah, I guess so.”

In the midday light, the fresh mound of earth covering the empty coffin looks like a massive anthill. Phil scuffs his boot in the dirt and thinks, very, very distantly, that Tubbo might be right with this one - that Jschlatt’s death might have been more of a tragedy than they were keen to make it out to be.

_5.  
_ ****_**KING LEAR**_  
_You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,  
_ _As full of grief as age, wretched in both._

There’s a ghost, of course. People like Wilbur Soot don’t easily go. 

Somehow, Phil is the one who finds him, floating out near spawn. Phil takes the opportunity to scout the place out and finds him, hanging in the air like a lost puppy, and when he catches sight of Phil, he has to swallow down his nausea until he can breathe again.

He’s so pale that he looks grey. The tips of his fingers are, in fact, grey, darkened by. . . something. He’s in his yellow sweater, the one Techno knit him when they were kids, and black jeans and a beanie that Phil doesn’t recognize. His eyes are coals in his face.

“Phil!” he chirps happily, “oh, God, it’s so nice to see a familiar face!”

“Wilbur?” he asks, sounding incredulous though he isn’t. “You - Wil?”

“That’s me,” Wilbur says, toying with a tiny snag in the center of his sweater. “My name. Don’t wear it out, Philza, I think that would be very bad indeed.” 

Phil swallows, taking in the sight of him. Wilbur wastes no seconds. “Can’t seem to remember where I am, Phil. Rather unusual. I’m - do you think you can take me to Tommy? I need to see my vice.”

Christ, how long ago was that? He forces himself to make small talk, wracks his brains for any semblance of normalcy. “What can you remember?” he asks, voice ghostly and thin. 

“Oh, lots of things,” Wilbur says. He starts counting off on his fingers. “Me and Tommy - and Tubbo, and Eret and Niki - we started a nation, called it L’manburg, and - and Phil, we won the war, and Tommy was a real hero. You’d be real proud of him, Phil, have you seen him? I need to talk to him, I think - anyway. We won, and we won _hard_ , and I - well, I lead the revolution, right, but I was thinking, ‘we’re democratic and we don’t have a democratically elected leader! we really ought to change that.’ And so I did - I held an election, right, real big deal, and then we won that, too, me and Tommy, and Tubbo, too, and then I -” he swallows, “- there was a ravine, I think I must have fell - and here I am!” he gives a breathless giggle, but he doesn’t inhale. Makes sense. Ghosts don’t have to breathe. 

And it’s all wrong. Phil knows it is, uneducated as he is, but he can’t bring himself to correct the man stood in front of him. “Okay,” he says dumbly. “I can - I can take you to L’manburg.”

“You look sad, Phil,” Wilbur says, eyebrows furrowed in sympathy. “Are you sad, at all?”

“No, Wil,” he says. “I’m - no.”

“That’s good,” Wilbur says cheerily, walking about a half foot off the ground at Phil’s side. “I don’t much like when people are sad. It’s much better when people are happy!”

“It looks different now,” Phil says suddenly. 

Wilbur blinks owlishly at him. “Why? How long was I - uh, what?”

“Just some - it’s not the same as it was,” he says. 

“Okay,” Wilbur says. There’s a draw of silence as they walk in twin contemplation. Slowly, Wilbur sinks, and Phil can’t even say anything as they trek dutifully down the Prime path and past the holy land. 

“I think, maybe,” Wilbur Soot’s spirit says from sunk halfway into the ground, “that I'd like to start a library. Wouldn't that be lovely, Phil? A library!” He clasps his hands together all pleased like. “Just like the one back at home.”

“Wil,” he says, calm as he can muster. “Up here, mate.”

“Oh! Prime’s sake, goodness me -” Wilbur pulls himself inch by painful inch from the soil of New L’manburg. “Sorry, you know how it gets.”

He doesn't, of course. “A library?”

“Like the one back at home,” Wilbur hums again. Phil remembers the books, the coziness of the place and shelves full of volume after volume, and knows that Wilbur is not talking about the survival home he grew up in.

“I didn't know L’manburg had a library.”

“Of course we do! Tubbo ran it - they're a good kid, Phil, surely Tommy’ll introduce you - Tubbo ran it, and I donated once when - when - hey, I heard he's the - the, uh - uh - sorry.”

Wilbur sputters out of words with an abrupt pang of loss. Phil stops walking, and Wilbur's frozen to the spot like he's gone and blue-screened. “Mate?” No response - Wilbur's eyes drill holes into the horizon. “Will? Hey, Will?”

“Sorry?” His head snaps round with a boneless fluidity about a second after the rest of his body does. “Oh, Prime's sake - I've completely forgotten what we were chattering on about.”

“Don't worry about it,” Phil says cautiously. Wilbur smiles at him with perfect, pearly white teeth, and then his eyes drop to Phil's waist. 

“Oh, dear! Is that your sword?” He points one mangled, greying finger to Phil's belt.

Phil swallows. “It's, uh,” and he pulls the blade carefully from it's sheath, “yeah. Yeah, it's mine.”

“I - hm.” Wilbur gnaws at his lip. It's a ridiculously childish habit that Phil had tried to work him out of. “I could almost swear I'd seen it before. Say, does Techno have one like that?”

So that solves the sword problem. 

“He just might,” Phil says, making a mental note to bring it back to him. “Tell me more about this library plan.”

“Library -? Oh! Oh, right, yes - well I just think it'd be nice to have, is all - all these important documents floating around, and I've heard that the new acting administration's made a decree - good chap, he is, good chap - and I figure, I figure, can't take the piss out of us if we've got all our ducks in a row!”

“Sure,” Phil agrees. 

“Just have to make it blast proof,” Wilbur says. “You know that Eret fellow? They’re - I don’t like Eret, no sir - they blew us all up, once. Well, not actually - but they betrayed us, Phil, they sure did. Herded us like sheep into their little control room and killed us all.”

Phil swallows. “That sounds horrible.”

“Oh, it was,” Wilbur says. “Destroyed all of our things! They got every last bit of it, and then the place - well, this was later on - but the whole of L’manburg blew up, if you hadn’t noticed! And so I think, right, I think that this library, with all of the important things, I think we should make it unbreakable.”

Phil’s brow furrows. That’s a detail that Wilbur decidedly didn’t remember even seconds ago. “How did L’manburg blow up?” he asks gently.

Wilbur freezes beside him, pitch black eyes boring into Phil’s. “Sorry?”

“Uh,” Phil says smartly, wetting his lips in the silence.

Wilbur doesn’t answer, refusing to break the uncomfortable eye contact. “I don’t think I understand the question,” he says sadly. “This is - I don’t think that’s a happy thing. We should talk about something else.” And then he marches forward, sinking to his ankles as if he were walking through mud and not solid stone.

Phil scrambles after him. “You care about history, Wil?” 

“Of course,” Wilbur’s spirit answers valiantly. “Doomed to repeat itself if we don’t remember, innit? Very - very important thing, history.” He hums, tipping his head back. “I think I’d like to become a writer. I think I’d be very good at it, don’t you?”

“Of course,” Phil says with a cautiously encouraging smile. “Um - you wanted to talk to Tommy, right?”

Wilbur visibly brightens. “Right, yes! Of course! My - my vice, my brother - TommyInnit, needed to speak with him.”

“Well,” Phil says, tapping once on the wooden door they’ve stopped in front of, “this is the place.”

Wilbur gives pause, staring at the oak with a tight-lipped expression. “Tommy lives here?” he asks, voice soft. “What about the embassy?”

“The embassy’s still there,” Phil assures. “He’s just here for now, is all.”

“Oh,” Wilbur says. “Oh! Oh, okay!” And he walks through the shut door, shouting a hello. Phil shoves hastily after him, slamming the door shut hard enough to rattle on its uneven hinges. “Tommy? It’s me!”

“Wilbur,” Phil says warningly as something creaks upstairs, and Wilbur wrinkles his nose.

“I don’t think I like that name,” he says. “Maybe I’ll come up with something new. Like a pseudonym, or something.”

“Please,” Phil says quietly, but he’s not really sure what he’s asking.

“Is he here, Phil?” Wilbur asks, eyes wide in his face. “I thought you said he was here -”

“You’re dead,” Tommy says from their left. He’s stood at the top of his stairs, expression one of resignation and glum, monotonous rage. 

“Sorry?” Wilbur says. Then his eyebrows shoot up. “Oh, Tommy! I’ve been meaning to speak to you - I don’t remember what about, actually -”

“You’re _dead,_ ” Tommy says, sharper this time as he tromps down the stairs and comes to stand at the bottom of them, face twisted in ugly hatred. “You’re fucking dead, Wil.”

Wilbur blinks at him, and then down at himself. “Am I?” He snaps his fingers. “That’s right! That’s right, I knew that -” and he turns to face Phil, then, “- you did that!”

Phil stares back at him, wide eyed and feeling a bit like he’s going to explode. 

“That’s what it was,” Wilbur says. “That’s what I needed to speak to you about.”

“Fuck you,” Tommy spits. 

“Sorry,” Wilbur says almost automatically. “I guess you already know, then. That’s fine!”

“Dead people don’t talk,” Tommy says, and then he turns to Phil. “Why are you here?”

Phil stares at him, too, uncertain. “Wilbur,” he says quietly, “I think you should go.”

“You killed me,” Wilbur continues upon being recognized. “I remember that really well. I was quite happy, then.” 

Something wounded and animalistic slips from Phil’s throat. Wilbur gives him a funny look before giggling like a child into the unforgiving silence. “I don’t remember a lot of things, actually. I just woke up at spawn, you know, and then Phil finds me - I’d been thinking about it the whole time! I wanted to say thank you, actually -”

“Get out,” Tommy says dangerously. “Out, out -” and he prods a finger at Wilbur’s chest, slipping through it like gelatin up to his knuckle, “- get out of my _damn house, Wil -_ ”

“Sorry! Sorry,” Wilbur says again, and the two of them watch, horrified, as he begins to fizzle at the edges. “Sorry, I - I don’t know what’s wrong, but I hope you feel better - I’m very proud of you!” 

And he’s gone, then, dripping through Tommy’s floorboards as he sinks through them and melts back into the air. Tommy makes a noise and says nothing as he goes to the sink and washes his face in his hands. 

Phil stands awkwardly in the center of his home, somewhere between the kitchen and makeshift living room. Tommy stoops, hands on the edge of the sink as he stares blankly out the window over it. “What the fuck was that?”

“I found him,” Phil says quietly. “Out by spawn. He wanted to see L’manburg.”

Tommy says nothing, shifting as his legs give out beneath him. 

“He, uh. He wanted to see you, I guess.”

Another stretch of silence. Tommy gets his feet back under him, and Phil takes the moment to come to rest against his kitchen counter. 

“Prime,” Tommy says under his breath. Phil doesn’t dare reach out and touch him. “I - for Prime’s sake, Phil.” 

“Yeah.”

“He’s dead,” Tommy repeats, sounding terribly like a mantra. “And he’s here.”

Phil can only nod. Tommy stares down at his hands.

“He’s completely insane,” he says. “I hate him. I hate him so much.”

“I know,” Phil says, and he doesn’t and they both know it. “I know, Tommy. I know.”


End file.
